Gee’s Reviews > James Burnham: An Intellectual Biography > Status Update

He questioned any change produced by the human mind or ideology—change inspired by concepts such as democracy, freedom, or equality. The Burkean insinuated that events in Africa could emulate the French Revolution;
he feared that in their quest for equality, Africans may resort to violence. It may be too much change too fast.

Contending that under no conditions could all
of the people of Asia, Latin America, and Africa achieve the same eco-nomic status as the West, Burnham wrote, “Most—not all, but most—
of these underdeveloped nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America are underdeveloped for good and sufficient reasons—of soil, climate, rain-fall, paucity of sources (especially sources of energy), not to speak of the natu

Burnham argues that these ideologically driven reformers merely tried to assuage their guilt about the fallen world around them.
Christianity solved the problem of guilt by recognizing humanity’s fallen state. But liberalism has no such pretenses. Consequently, beset by guilt, the liberal becomes consumed with change, what Burnham calls “method rather than results."

For the pro-fessed realist, skid row is just part of the “long and wonderfully intri-cate natural evolution of the city.” Self-contained, skid row shields the rest of society from its potential destructiveness. Society after all is
“hierarchal and differentiated, not equalized or regimented.” Burnham contends that recent liberal attempts to correct the situation in
New York City had only made things worse

Any holes in the ideology can easily be
patched up to satisfy the believer. Those working within ideological frameworks must at least sometimes bend reality so it conforms to an
ideology. Burnham insists that for the faithful, attitudes can always be adjusted so that no observation can ever undermine ideology. He
notes that ideologues divide people into two: those who share my ide-ology and those who do not.

Suicide of the West continues Burnham’s attacks on ideology. It argues that ideology attempts to study events by using a preexisting set of ideas, but this precludes the adherent from seeing the bigger, more practical, picture. And ideology cannot be refuted by logical analysis and evidence: “An ideologue—one who thinks ideologically—can’t lose.

Congress and the American Tradition insists that liberals fostered Caesa-rism because of their faith in reason and government. They believe that
when guided by reasonable men, government promotes reform and prog-ress. For Burnham, conservatives have more realistic attitudes toward
human nature because they recognize that people are not always governed by reason. Conservatives favor a mixture of elements

centralization meant more power for the bureaucracy, what Burnham calls the “fourth branch of government.”
He suggests that government agencies exercised “extraordinary authority” over national life. In theory, these agencies were arms of Congress because Congress created them and could abolish them. In practice, these agencies devel-oped their own political life. They expand, and then Congress loses the abi